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Honestly, MM might have a point. I've talked with a number of people who've been involved in MQ and Ghosthunter-type shows, and they all pretty much say the same thing: The production staff simply doesn't care whether or not they're putting together an honest or scientific program. They only care about the technical side of things and getting viewers in front of TVs. Honesty is not part of the equation.

Well, come now, the producers weren't the ones who made all those statements. You can quibble about what was cut out, but you can't dispute all the misleading statements made by the participants. And that "dark man" stunt.....that is so inherently dishonest.

"the producer/deviil made me do it" stuff explains about 1/4 of the misleading stuff on that show.

Well, come now, the producers weren't the ones who made all those statements. You can quibble about what was cut out, but you can't dispute all the misleading statements made by the participants. And that "dark man" stunt.....that is so inherently dishonest.

"the producer/deviil made me do it" stuff explains about 1/4 of the misleading stuff on that show.

Oh, no doubt. But "the producer did something without my involvement or consent" is entirely within the realm of possibility.

__________________"People like me are what stand between us and Auschwitz." - Newt Gingrich

The next episode is the North Carolina expedition, and in the promos, it looks like money, bobo and the "skeptic" have a bit of an argument over something, with the "skeptic" claiming this isn't how you gather evidence(no, really?), and money claiming HE'S the leader, and HE was right.

Moneymaker never shortchanges himself when it comes to new theories/inventions in the search for bigfoot as his claim to understanding woodknocking first will attest. Someone probably clued him in to methane having no odor or he would have been happy to have the skunk ape smell attributed him too. He is simply the chief twit in charge of the three other twits. Harry Henderson has expressed in other posts that there is no money to be made in bigfootery which I originally agreed with but I am now thinking that that is all that keeps people with some education in science doing this dufus searching. How can a reasonable person look at what has been presented in two Finding Bigfoot programs and think that such a thing exists? Money is the only explanation.

More on the "Dark Man" "technique" used by the BRFO. I don't pretend that the setting of this study is identical. But the Dark Man is sleep deprived and in a perceived dangerous environment as well as "blinded." Note that only 15 minutes of sensory deprivation produced sensory distortion and abnormal thoughts. Edited for length. Anyone wishing the full article PM me.

Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.

Abstract:
People experiencing sensory deprivation often report perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations, especially over extended periods of time. However, there is little evidence concerning short-term sensory deprivation and whether its effects differ depending on the individual concerned, and in particular their proneness to psychosis. This study explored whether perceptual disturbances could be elicited by a brief period of complete isolation from sound and vision in both highly hallucination prone and nonhallucination prone groups. Greater psychotomimetic experiences taking the form of perceptual disturbances, paranoia, and anhedonia were found across both groups when under sensory deprivation. In addition, hallucination-prone individuals experienced more perceptual disturbances when placed in short-term sensory deprivation than nonprone individuals. ...

Sensory deprivation has a long history of investigation most prominently during the 50s and 60s, and something of a dearth since that time perhaps due to a pervasive lack of conclusiveness in the area. ... Anechoic chambers are by definition quiet, though even these vary in this respect, and multimodal deprivation is probably more effective than when one sense is predominantly involved. The present study aimed for near complete deprivation of sight and sound by using a highly effective anechoic chamber with the total removal of any light source.

...

Broadly consistent with this theory, a prominent contemporary information processing account of hallucinations posits that they originate from problems discriminating between their inner thoughts and external events (Bentall, 1990). In addition to poor self-monitoring, hallucinators may experience a greater intensity to internally-generated percepts than controls, perhaps at levels similar to externally generated ones (Blakemore et al., 2000).

This study aims to establish whether brief sensory deprivation in an anechoic chamber can elicit psychotic-like experiences, and perceptual distortions in particular, and whether these are related to hallucination proneness. To measure psychotic-like experiences the study used an approach drawn from acute drug studies (Mason et al., 2009). The Psychotomimetic States Inventory (PSI; Mason et al., 2008) contains items tapping perceptual distortions, delusional thinking, anhedonia, mania, paranoia, and cognitive disorganization. We hypothesized that short-term sensory deprivation would lead to a range of psychotic-like experiences as assessed by the Psychotomimetic States Inventory, ...

METHOD

Participants
These were recruited from a large group drawn from the normal university population Participants confirmed that they had no history of a major psychiatric or neurological disorder and were not currently using recreational drugs.

Measures
The Revised Hallucinations Scale (RHS; Morrison et al., 2002) is a 24-item questionnaire based on the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (Launay and Slade, 1981) measuring a predisposition to experience hallucinations.

Procedure
The anechoic chamber is effectively constructed as a room within a room...This results in a very low noise environment in which the sound pressure due to outside levels is below the threshold of hearing. ...They spent 15 minutes in the chamber in complete darkness. Participants were not told precisely how long they would spend in the chamber but were told it would be “several minutes.” ...After completion of 15 minutes within the chamber, participants were moved to an ante-room where they were immediately asked to complete the PSI. Following this, they completed a structured interview with the experimenter for 20 minutes...

RESULTS
...

Results of a mixed between-within subjects repeated measures analysis of variance demonstrated a significant main effect of time for the Perceptual Distortions (W = 0.44, F (1, 17) = 21.99, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.56), Anhedonia (W = 0.43, F (1, 17) = 23.03, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.58) and Paranoia (W = 0.79, F (1, 17) = 4.47, p < 0.05, partial eta squared = 0.21) subscales. This indicates that all groups scored more highly across these subscales immediately after sensory deprivation when compared with resting conditions. ... Post hoc testing revealed that while hallucination prone individuals experienced significantly more perceptual distortions under sensory deprivation (t = 4.25, p < 0.01), low scorers did not (t = 1.65, p = 0.27). Under sensory deprivation, 5 of the 9 participants saw “faces even though no-one was in fact there” (2 strongly); 6 saw “shapes and forms even though they weren’t there” (4 strongly); 4 felt that their “sense of smell was unusually strong or different” (1 strongly) and 2 “sensed an evil presence even though they couldn’t see it” (both moderately). Almost all (7) thought that they had “experienced something very special or important” at least to a “slight” extent.
...
CONCLUSIONS
Short-term sensory deprivation was found to lead to increases in several aspects of psychotic-like experience including perceptual disturbances, anhedonia, and paranoia. Hallucination prone participants experienced greater perceptual disturbances than nonprone participants. This result can be interpreted as supporting a source monitoring explanation for the generation of hallucinations in the absence of external stimuli.

More on the "Dark Man" "technique" used by the BRFO. I don't pretend that the setting of this study is identical. But the Dark Man is sleep deprived and in a perceived dangerous environment as well as "blinded." Note that only 15 minutes of sensory deprivation produced sensory distortion and abnormal thoughts. Edited for length. Anyone wishing the full article PM me.

Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.

Abstract:
People experiencing sensory deprivation often report perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations, especially over extended periods of time. However, there is little evidence concerning short-term sensory deprivation and whether its effects differ depending on the individual concerned, and in particular their proneness to psychosis. This study explored whether perceptual disturbances could be elicited by a brief period of complete isolation from sound and vision in both highly hallucination prone and nonhallucination prone groups. Greater psychotomimetic experiences taking the form of perceptual disturbances, paranoia, and anhedonia were found across both groups when under sensory deprivation. In addition, hallucination-prone individuals experienced more perceptual disturbances when placed in short-term sensory deprivation than nonprone individuals. ...

Sensory deprivation has a long history of investigation most prominently during the 50s and 60s, and something of a dearth since that time perhaps due to a pervasive lack of conclusiveness in the area. ... Anechoic chambers are by definition quiet, though even these vary in this respect, and multimodal deprivation is probably more effective than when one sense is predominantly involved. The present study aimed for near complete deprivation of sight and sound by using a highly effective anechoic chamber with the total removal of any light source.

...

Broadly consistent with this theory, a prominent contemporary information processing account of hallucinations posits that they originate from problems discriminating between their inner thoughts and external events (Bentall, 1990). In addition to poor self-monitoring, hallucinators may experience a greater intensity to internally-generated percepts than controls, perhaps at levels similar to externally generated ones (Blakemore et al., 2000).

This study aims to establish whether brief sensory deprivation in an anechoic chamber can elicit psychotic-like experiences, and perceptual distortions in particular, and whether these are related to hallucination proneness. To measure psychotic-like experiences the study used an approach drawn from acute drug studies (Mason et al., 2009). The Psychotomimetic States Inventory (PSI; Mason et al., 2008) contains items tapping perceptual distortions, delusional thinking, anhedonia, mania, paranoia, and cognitive disorganization. We hypothesized that short-term sensory deprivation would lead to a range of psychotic-like experiences as assessed by the Psychotomimetic States Inventory, ...

METHOD

Participants
These were recruited from a large group drawn from the normal university population Participants confirmed that they had no history of a major psychiatric or neurological disorder and were not currently using recreational drugs.

Measures
The Revised Hallucinations Scale (RHS; Morrison et al., 2002) is a 24-item questionnaire based on the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (Launay and Slade, 1981) measuring a predisposition to experience hallucinations.

Procedure
The anechoic chamber is effectively constructed as a room within a room...This results in a very low noise environment in which the sound pressure due to outside levels is below the threshold of hearing. ...They spent 15 minutes in the chamber in complete darkness. Participants were not told precisely how long they would spend in the chamber but were told it would be “several minutes.” ...After completion of 15 minutes within the chamber, participants were moved to an ante-room where they were immediately asked to complete the PSI. Following this, they completed a structured interview with the experimenter for 20 minutes...

RESULTS
...

Results of a mixed between-within subjects repeated measures analysis of variance demonstrated a significant main effect of time for the Perceptual Distortions (W = 0.44, F (1, 17) = 21.99, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.56), Anhedonia (W = 0.43, F (1, 17) = 23.03, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.58) and Paranoia (W = 0.79, F (1, 17) = 4.47, p < 0.05, partial eta squared = 0.21) subscales. This indicates that all groups scored more highly across these subscales immediately after sensory deprivation when compared with resting conditions. ... Post hoc testing revealed that while hallucination prone individuals experienced significantly more perceptual distortions under sensory deprivation (t = 4.25, p < 0.01), low scorers did not (t = 1.65, p = 0.27). Under sensory deprivation, 5 of the 9 participants saw “faces even though no-one was in fact there” (2 strongly); 6 saw “shapes and forms even though they weren’t there” (4 strongly); 4 felt that their “sense of smell was unusually strong or different” (1 strongly) and 2 “sensed an evil presence even though they couldn’t see it” (both moderately). Almost all (7) thought that they had “experienced something very special or important” at least to a “slight” extent.
...
CONCLUSIONS
Short-term sensory deprivation was found to lead to increases in several aspects of psychotic-like experience including perceptual disturbances, anhedonia, and paranoia. Hallucination prone participants experienced greater perceptual disturbances than nonprone participants. This result can be interpreted as supporting a source monitoring explanation for the generation of hallucinations in the absence of external stimuli.

Another technique which is less sadistic but also very effective is the Santa Claus method. On the last night in camp after the campers are completely exhausted and fast asleep, Bigfoot comes into camp and leaves some "evidence" for the campers when they wake up in the morning.

More on the "Dark Man" "technique" used by the BRFO. I don't pretend that the setting of this study is identical. But the Dark Man is sleep deprived and in a perceived dangerous environment as well as "blinded." Note that only 15 minutes of sensory deprivation produced sensory distortion and abnormal thoughts. Edited for length. Anyone wishing the full article PM me.

Department of Clinical, Educational, and Health Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.

Abstract:
People experiencing sensory deprivation often report perceptual disturbances such as hallucinations, especially over extended periods of time. However, there is little evidence concerning short-term sensory deprivation and whether its effects differ depending on the individual concerned, and in particular their proneness to psychosis. This study explored whether perceptual disturbances could be elicited by a brief period of complete isolation from sound and vision in both highly hallucination prone and nonhallucination prone groups. Greater psychotomimetic experiences taking the form of perceptual disturbances, paranoia, and anhedonia were found across both groups when under sensory deprivation. In addition, hallucination-prone individuals experienced more perceptual disturbances when placed in short-term sensory deprivation than nonprone individuals. ...

Sensory deprivation has a long history of investigation most prominently during the 50s and 60s, and something of a dearth since that time perhaps due to a pervasive lack of conclusiveness in the area. ... Anechoic chambers are by definition quiet, though even these vary in this respect, and multimodal deprivation is probably more effective than when one sense is predominantly involved. The present study aimed for near complete deprivation of sight and sound by using a highly effective anechoic chamber with the total removal of any light source.

...

Broadly consistent with this theory, a prominent contemporary information processing account of hallucinations posits that they originate from problems discriminating between their inner thoughts and external events (Bentall, 1990). In addition to poor self-monitoring, hallucinators may experience a greater intensity to internally-generated percepts than controls, perhaps at levels similar to externally generated ones (Blakemore et al., 2000).

This study aims to establish whether brief sensory deprivation in an anechoic chamber can elicit psychotic-like experiences, and perceptual distortions in particular, and whether these are related to hallucination proneness. To measure psychotic-like experiences the study used an approach drawn from acute drug studies (Mason et al., 2009). The Psychotomimetic States Inventory (PSI; Mason et al., 2008) contains items tapping perceptual distortions, delusional thinking, anhedonia, mania, paranoia, and cognitive disorganization. We hypothesized that short-term sensory deprivation would lead to a range of psychotic-like experiences as assessed by the Psychotomimetic States Inventory, ...

METHOD

Participants
These were recruited from a large group drawn from the normal university population Participants confirmed that they had no history of a major psychiatric or neurological disorder and were not currently using recreational drugs.

Measures
The Revised Hallucinations Scale (RHS; Morrison et al., 2002) is a 24-item questionnaire based on the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (Launay and Slade, 1981) measuring a predisposition to experience hallucinations.

Procedure
The anechoic chamber is effectively constructed as a room within a room...This results in a very low noise environment in which the sound pressure due to outside levels is below the threshold of hearing. ...They spent 15 minutes in the chamber in complete darkness. Participants were not told precisely how long they would spend in the chamber but were told it would be “several minutes.” ...After completion of 15 minutes within the chamber, participants were moved to an ante-room where they were immediately asked to complete the PSI. Following this, they completed a structured interview with the experimenter for 20 minutes...

RESULTS
...

Results of a mixed between-within subjects repeated measures analysis of variance demonstrated a significant main effect of time for the Perceptual Distortions (W = 0.44, F (1, 17) = 21.99, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.56), Anhedonia (W = 0.43, F (1, 17) = 23.03, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.58) and Paranoia (W = 0.79, F (1, 17) = 4.47, p < 0.05, partial eta squared = 0.21) subscales. This indicates that all groups scored more highly across these subscales immediately after sensory deprivation when compared with resting conditions. ... Post hoc testing revealed that while hallucination prone individuals experienced significantly more perceptual distortions under sensory deprivation (t = 4.25, p < 0.01), low scorers did not (t = 1.65, p = 0.27). Under sensory deprivation, 5 of the 9 participants saw “faces even though no-one was in fact there” (2 strongly); 6 saw “shapes and forms even though they weren’t there” (4 strongly); 4 felt that their “sense of smell was unusually strong or different” (1 strongly) and 2 “sensed an evil presence even though they couldn’t see it” (both moderately). Almost all (7) thought that they had “experienced something very special or important” at least to a “slight” extent.
...
CONCLUSIONS
Short-term sensory deprivation was found to lead to increases in several aspects of psychotic-like experience including perceptual disturbances, anhedonia, and paranoia. Hallucination prone participants experienced greater perceptual disturbances than nonprone participants. This result can be interpreted as supporting a source monitoring explanation for the generation of hallucinations in the absence of external stimuli.

So the Dark Man technique sounds like it could hold true for any overnight or nightly BF hunting expeditions, not just this hunt in Florida? Especially if the participants are easily suggestible which those eagerly participating in any kind of BF expedition I assume would be?

Bigfoot profit lives!
(New York, New York, June 7, 20011) – Captain Paul Watson’s lifelong quest to end whaling may be coming to an end in the fourth and potentially final season of WHALE WARS, and viewers lined up behind him and his Sea Shepherd Conservation Society as the Friday’s premiere was the series’ most-watched debut ever, pulling in 1.271M P2+ viewers.

The season opener – “Battle Cry” – was also the series’ most-watched opener ever among all major demos, including P25-54 (724K), M25-54 (433K), W25-54 (291K), P18-49 (676K) and P18-34 (336K). ... The episode helped rank Animal Planet #3 among all ad-supported cable networks in the Friday 9 PM timeslot based on M25-54 and M18-49 delivery (excluding movies).
...

So the Dark Man technique sounds like it could hold true for any overnight or nightly BF hunting expeditions, not just this hunt in Florida? Especially if the participants are easily suggestible which those eagerly participating in any kind of BF expedition I assume would be?

Yes, there are a myriad of factors which provide confirmation bias and suggestibility. Besides the factors already mentioned, there is the "immersion" factor: one is surrounded by believers and the leaders are dedicated proselytizers....and when one spends several hundred dollars and several days on an outing, does one really want to return and face friends and family "empty handed?"

...and when one spends several hundred dollars and several days on an outing, does one really want to return and face friends and family "empty handed?"

And I think an easily overlooked (serious) aspect as to why all these groups of 'snipe hunters' always seem to come back with (at least) their own little version of an authentic Bigfoot Experience™ - but never any actual evidence. Storytelling is so easy too. All these pitiful, pepped-up, partyin participants need to tell their long suffering wives, GFs and/or otherwise 'politically correct partners' (oh and a few wimpy husbands too) they really did find Bigfoot so they can continue on with their pathetic lives of chasing (literal) shadows every other weekend and twice in the summer with a loudmouth, handgun carrying megalomaniac. "Yes, I'm sure you guys found Bigfoot, Horace! Now take out the trash."

__________________"Vegetarians are cool. All I eat are vegetarians, except for the occasional mountain lion steak." - Ted Nugent

A few links for those not familiar with snipe hunts:
-----
Snipe hunt: An elaborate practical joke in which an unsuspecting person takes part in a bogus hunt for a snipe, typically being left alone in the dark with instructions not to move until the snipe appears.https://www.facebook.com/pages/I-let...39644516049931

--------

snipe hunt
n.
1. An elaborate practical joke in which an unsuspecting person takes part in a bogus hunt for a snipe, typically being left alone in the dark with instructions not to move until the snipe appears.
2. A futile search or endeavor.http://www.thefreedictionary.com/snipe+hunt
Noun 1. snipe hunt - an elaborate practical joke in which the unsuspecting victim hunts a snipe and is typically left in the dark holding a bag and waiting for the snipe to run into it; "in the South a snipe hunt is practically a rite of passage"

popcorn plzMoneymaker slugs it out with the Cryptomunders over wood knocks, call blasting, expedition fakery, and who is the biggest 7 letter word that begins and ends with two different vowels. The best part is in the comments where he basically says I don't care if your family hates me; if you watch the show you're a fan ie you contribute to my financial success.

popcorn plzMoneymaker slugs it out with the Cryptomunders over wood knocks, call blasting, expedition fakery, and who is the biggest 7 letter word that begins and ends with two different vowels. The best part is in the comments where he basically says I don't care if your family hates me; if you watch the show you're a fan ie you contribute to my financial success.

Reading that was definitely more informative than watching FB.
Maybe Charlie S and Matt could go on tour together.

it shouldnt be called 'Finding Bigfoot', it should be called 'Playing Bigfoot'.

'Do ya wanna play Bigfoot?'
'You betcha!'
'OK let's split up and make Bigfoot calls, and hear it call back to us, then we can use these thermal imagers to find-'
'OH! OH!, can I play?'

__________________"I dont call that evolution, I call that the survival of the fittest." - Bulletmaker
"I thought skeptics would usually point towards a hoax rather than a group being duped." - makaya325
Kit is not a skeptic. He is a former Bigfoot believer that changed his position to that of non believer.- Crowlogic

"I'm having a really difficult time finding an explanation for this." ...Ranae Holland the scientist "skeptic" cast member of Finding Bigfoot. I bet that the producers and BFRO had a really easy time finding her.

We know that Moneymaker, Bobo and Barackman are dyed-in-the-wool Bigfoot believers. But where did Holland come from? Assignment for JREFers: find out where they got her from and why. We know that Leila Hadj-Chikh, the scientist hired to the Erickson Project, had been on BFRO expeditions prior to her recruitment/contract.

When these scientists are chosen to team up with Bigfooters for projects, are they cherry picked because they are already known to be highly sympathetic or supportive of the existence of Bigfoot?

__________________Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot.

Seriously, “playing Bigfoot” is very close to the mark. My interest is in the Yowie (Australia’s Bigfoot) and the vast majority of modern Yowie claims come from a small group of socially connected people (who call themselves “Yowie Researchers”), their associates, and their friend-of-a-friend network. Prime importance is placed upon how to interpret ambiguous stimuli and the Australian bush, particularly at night, provides a natural theatre of ambiguity for the imagination to run wild. This is why there are there are hundreds of Yowie reports/stories but the supporting evidence (what little there actually is) consists of nothing but ambiguous shapes, misidentifications, and fakes. It bears far more of a resemblance to adult roleplaying games than actual research.

It is also interesting to note that the Bigfooter’s Bible – Meldrum’s Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science is published by White Wolf – the world’s leading adult horror/fantasy storytelling game genre (known as Mind’s Eye Theatre). It is also possible to take the role of a Bigfoot or a Bigfoot Researcher within their Changeling gaming system. White Wolf have not published any other science-based books other than Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science which happens to fit neatly into their business plan as a roleplaying prop.

Live action roleplaying is capable of eliciting some powerful emotions in participants even though it is make-believe. Is Bigfoot Research any different? TV shows like Monsterquest (another White Wolf production) and Finding Bigfoot suggest there is little difference between believing and make-believing in Bigfoot.

That's fine but White Wolf Entertainment produced the DVD not the book. The book was published by Tom Doherty Associates.
White Wolf Entertainment is not associated with White Wolf Publishing which is the role playing publisher you are referring to.

Tonight is the showing of the Finding Bigfoot episode from North Carolina. This will feature the Zagnut-eating Bigfoot caught on thermal camera by Mike Greene. Gifts given to this Bigfoot included squeaky bathtub toys, pennies, fruit, peanut butter, and a Zagnut candy bar. The Bigfoot also gave a return gift to Greene in the form of five small rocks neatly placed on a stump. We previously discussed this video evidence in this thread.

__________________Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot.